November Meeting Review

by Kathy Recchiuti

The STC RMC networking meeting on November 15 at Panera Bread in the Denver Tech Center was a nice opportunity to meet others in the field, hear about job openings, and share what’s going on at work, all while enjoying a good salad, sandwich or bowl of soup. The meeting was attended by John Endicott, Becky Williams, Ken Bingenheimer, Marcia Wood, Jessica Betterly, Martha Sippel and Kathy Recchiuti.

The lively discussion moved from topic to topic, including current job situations, past work in journalism, the good old days in newspaper and radio writing, and even good places to find historic photos of Colorado . We talked a little about our favorite and least favorite places to find typos and shaky writing habits, not to mention some professions that have a knack for them. We even swapped colloquialisms that add to the challenge of global communications. Can you to translate any of the following:  a cow on ice… a dog’s breakfast …laughing tackle. (Answers can be found at the end of this article.)

November networking meeting

Marcia talked about how much she enjoys the team she works with as a copy editor. Becky talked about “traffic,” as it applies in the television broadcast world, and Martha commented about how it differed from “traffic” projects she worked on related to GIS in the transportation field. Jessica described some types of software her company develops for nonprofit organizations. Ken mentioned that he was in journalism in the past and he also shared that when you work in this industry, “You work when there’s news, not when you choose.” John added that he worked for a daily paper at one time. He also talked about a recent work project that involves developing software for police detectives. Some of my questions about contracting prompted Martha to share “projects that never rolled out” stories. These included crime scene investigation software (think TV’s CSI visual displays) and other exciting projects that never came to fruition. She also shared a bit of what’s going on in the Usability Professionals Association (UPA).

A few announced job openings:  copy writer in the insurance field, technical writer for software, usability professional and programmer. At least two of these should be posted on our STC RMC Jobs page at http://www.stcrmc.org/jobs_freelance/jobline.htm by the time you read this.

People shared their memories of the Minneapolis conference and talked about plans for attending upcoming conferences in 2008.

This gathering was, indeed, a good opportunity to get acquainted with some friendly technical communicators and to network beyond the time allotted at our usual monthly meetings.

Translation of the colloquialisms above:  a serious situation, a mess, teeth.

Kathy Recchiuti is Secretary of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication.